As known, the said sealed packages or containers are formed, filled and sealed in a machine or a combination of machines and are then conveyed to an end packaging station, in which the sealed packages or containers are packaged in groups into packaging boxes.
Conveniently, packaging boxes are formed from respective sheet packaging elements, which are stored in a magazine and picked up from the latter to be then subjected to folding operations in the end packaging station.
Packaging elements are typically defined by plane, rectangular or square blanks, which, in some cases, may also be provided with handles to ease transportation of the resulting packaging boxes.
Each handle is in general applied to one of the opposite faces of a relative packaging element so as to protrude from the latter. The presence of handles may cause the packaging elements to fan out and so compromise the stackability of the packaging elements in a magazine.
A need particularly felt within the industry is to keep the packaging elements stored in the magazine with given orientations, so that they can be picked up in the right way to be fed to the end packaging station and to be subjected to folding operations in such station.
Another need particularly felt within the industry is to provide a correct distribution of the packaging elements in the magazine irrespective of their initial loading so as to ensure a correct feeding of the packaging elements themselves to the end packaging station.